


Faintly Falling

by kaydeefalls



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-04
Updated: 2006-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaydeefalls/pseuds/kaydeefalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus wonders what Sirius is really seeing. Dreams, perhaps. Ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faintly Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Remix of Kenaz's [Neither Sign Nor Symbol](http://shackinup-sesa.livejournal.com/23096.html)

_His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.  
\- James Joyce_

*

Remus is dreaming of snow.

Snow like a whirlwind, snow like a blizzard, but its touch is soft and gentle upon Remus's face, and he laughs as he pushes his way forward. The snow shifts and constructs a tunnel around him, like the elaborate snow forts and castles he and Sirius and James and Peter used to build in the winter, magic dancing along the walls, forming turrets and caverns. Remus puts his hand up to the wall and it all crumbles around him. Now he's in a large room with an archway before him, the stone floor cold under his bare feet, the chill seeping into his toes, and the wind is still whistling merrily, making the tattered curtain hanging from the archway ripple and dance. Remus stares at the archway, frowning; it's oddly familiar, like an echo from the past or an etching in an ancient scroll--

Then the space around him shifts, and Lily is standing there in the archway, and the curtain has become her veil, she's dressed all in flowing fabrics and her face is veiled, and her red hair flows out behind her in the breeze, a whirlwind of red and veils, and she leans forward, her eyes gleaming. She looks like an illustration Remus once saw in a book as a child, Scheherazade, and her voice is gentle as she murmurs, "Let me tell you a story..."

And she steps aside, drawing back the veils, and through the archway Remus can see snow. "Where does the archway lead?" Remus asks her. His breath leaves a small cloud of frost in the cold air.

Lily laughs. It sounds like the tinkling of thousands of tiny bells. "To the next chapter," she tells him.

There's a soft pressure on Remus's shoulder, warm, and he turns. Sirius is there, but not his Sirius, not the Sirius he's sleeping beside, but a much younger Sirius, fifteen and still full of everything good in life. "Don't worry," Sirius tells him cheerfully. "You'll catch up eventually." He flashes Remus a brilliant smile, then plunges through the archway with a joyful whoop, disappearing into the whirling snow.

_You're running out of time_, a voice in Remus's head whispers. _Don't let him go yet._

"Wait!" Remus says, urgently. He tries to follow Sirius, but his feet are cold, so cold, frozen to the floor. "Sirius--"

*

He wakes up with a start. The fire in the bedroom has gone out in the night, and Remus's foot has strayed from beneath the blankets, cold in the unheated air. There's only emptiness beside him on the mattress where Sirius should be. Remus looks up.

Sirius is standing at the window, looking out, his back to the bed. It's snowing outside. He's staring out into the whirling snow as though it holds all the secrets in the universe, his palm pressed against the windowpane as though he might reach out through the glass and gently twist the snow and the air and the world back into its proper shape, back into what should have been.

Remus wonders what Sirius is really seeing. Dreams, perhaps. Ghosts. In the murky half-light, Sirius looks ghostlike himself, grey and pale, no more substantial than Remus's dreams. If Remus blinks, Sirius might fade away, the snows melting around him like sand slipping through an hourglass.

He shakes his head to dissipate the vision, once, twice, and pulls himself out of bed as quietly as he can manage. The ancient floorboards betray him, protesting under even Remus's slight weight, but Sirius doesn't move. Maybe he has frozen there, eyes searching through the snow, lost in it.

This room is too damn cold. "_Incendio_," Remus whispers, igniting the logs in the fireplace, flames darting up through the cold ashes. The heat slowly begins seeping into the room, almost reluctantly, as though unwilling to disturb the ghosts.

Remus crosses the room and reaches out to Sirius hesitantly, worried that the dream might dissolve, that his hand will pass through Sirius's shoulder, that Sirius is literally rather than figuratively a ghost of his former self. But of course Sirius's shoulder is solid, real, and Remus's tentative touch becomes firm when Sirius tilts his head to press his cheek against the back of Remus's hand.

Over Sirius's shoulder, through the window, Remus can see the snow drifting ever downwards, blanketing the earth in stillness and memory, holding reality at bay. Remus can understand how Sirius might be tempted to lose himself in it, to close off the rest of the world and remain blissfully ignorant to the time slipping past them. In his mind's eye, Remus sees Scheherazade-Lily again, the swirling veils, Sirius dashing off and disappearing into the snow.

_Not yet_, he thinks firmly, ignoring the nagging dream-whisper that says they're running out of time. He pulls Sirius back into his arms, pressing soft kisses into Sirius's neck.

Sirius is cool to the touch and lighter than he should be in Remus's arms, and Remus wonders how much longer they have before Sirius drifts away like melting snow, before Sirius goes mad with this house and the inactivity and loses what little of himself Azkaban left. Not long enough.

_Don't leave me just yet_, Remus doesn't say. Instead, he grasps Sirius's hand firmly and tugs him away from the window. "Let's go back to bed."

Sirius allows Remus to draw him away from the snow and the dreams and the ghosts, for now at least, and for that, Remus is grateful.

*

When Remus drifts off to sleep again, it's to find the archway once more, and Lily wreathed in veils, storyteller. "Don't worry," she tells him gently. "It's just the turning of a page. He'll be waiting."

Remus reaches out to her, the memory of Sirius's touch melting on his palm, time whirling about them like the wind. "But how does the story end?"

Lily smiles, dazzling him, like sunlight glancing off freshly fallen snow. "It doesn't," she says, and twirls away.


End file.
